What are some of the most unusual or uncommon dictionaries you think you have on your shelf?

I think these are unusual and perhaps not found on a lot of shelves of native English speakers--tell me if we have one in common :)

The A-Z of Opera by Hamilton
Smaller Classical Dictionary by Smith
Dictionary of Classical Mythology by Zimmerman
American Slang by Chapman
Dictionary of Drink by Halley
Kovels New Dictionary of Marks by Kovel
The Insult Dictionary
Ultimate Pocket Flags of the World
Afrikaans-English English-Afrikaans Practical Dictionary by Kromhout
The Consice Oxford Dictionary of English Etymologyby Hoad
You've Got Ketchup on Your Muumuu by Ehrlich
French Idioms by Kirk-Greene
Collins Dictionary of Prepositions
The Stoddart English French Visual Dictionary by Corbeil
Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia
Dictionnaire économique et juridique by Baleyte
Dictionnaire actuel de l'éducation by Legendre

which is the must have dictionary?

The Oxford English Dictionary. All 20 volumes of it!

Immy: For me the must have is the 2 volume The new Shorter Oxford English Dictionary--you name it, it's in there! Never seen the 20 volume one that joehutcheon above recommended. I wonder what the difference is?

After that I'd say the Pocket Oxford English Dictionary because it's easier to use :)

I have the OED on CD-ROM. I think it's even better. Hard to beat for finding all occurrences of a word not only as lemma, but in the definitions and quotes as well... and of course there is the question of size, too :-)

4>Eastofoz

Not to be a smart*ss, but the Shorter is a lot shorter than the 20-vol. OED, which attempts to record all senses of words and examples of the earliest usage, the latest usage, and, generally, a number of examples in between, especially for changes in meaning. There are several additional volumes that have been published since the OED was last published in full in the 1970s, and there are about 70 lexicographers in Oxford working on a new edition--which they don't know if they will ever publish in hard copy, as it will be much longer than the 20-volume version. (It has been suggested that they will print one presentation copy for the monarch--tradition!)

As an aside, I once met Robert Chapman, editor of the American Slang dictionary you have--nice, charming man.

I haven't even begun to put my dictionaries on LT . . . but the day will come!

I couldn't do without my Condensed OED I bought around 1972 -- I have to use a magnifying glass to read it.

Other reference books (I have 137 books tagged dictionaries, so this is just a sampling of some intersting titles):

Metaphysical Bible Dictionary by Unity School of Christianity
The Dictionary Catalog by Emanuel Molho
Rhode Island Dictionary (deals with its dialect)
Papal Bull by Dean Sullivan - humorous
Ulrich's International Periodical Dictionary 1986-87
A Dictionary of miracles, imitative, realistic, and dogmatic by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer.

>#1 eastofoz, I share both The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology and The Dictionary of Classical Mythology with you.

How about:
The Ultimate Visual Dictionary? by DK Publishing
The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers by Julie Ann Sadie
A Dictionary of Plant Lore by Roy Vickery
Dictionary of Vocal Terminology: an analysis by Cornelius L. Reid

although I think vpfluke's dictionary catalog may take the prize -- a dictionary of dictionaries!

I think my "Dictionary Catalog" is a singleton. (Touchstone worked last night, but not today)

Editing: the work Touchstone in Message 7 takes you to the wrong book.

How about A Dictionary of Russian Gesture? Anyone have that one?

Lag's Lexicon : A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Prison of To-day by Paul Tempest
Acronym Soup by Gilda and Paul Feldman
Isms : A Compendium of Concepts,Doctines,Traits and Beliefs by Alan & Theresa von Altendorf
The First English Dictionary 1604 by Robert Cawdrey
A Crash of Rhinoceroses (A Dictionary of Collective Nouns) by Rex Collings
Opus Maledictorum : A Book of Bad Words by Reinhold Aman
The Word Museum by Jeffrey Kacirk

Just a selection from quite a few very odd books tagged 'Dictionaries'

What a great thread! I never realised there were other dictionary fans out there.

I have The Oxford Etymological dictionary and A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities Smith's smaller classical dictionary too. Do you find there's not much more info in the etymological dictionary than there is in the OED?

The most unusual dictionary on my shelf would be the Langenscheidts Lilliput Italiano - Olandese which is 2 inches x 1.5 inches x half an inch. closely followed by the Fachwörterbuch Textil deutsch-englisch, which a few lines after Farbaffinität (dye affinity) informs me that Feh (n) is 'squirrel'. I'm from australia, where we don't have squirrels - are they used much in the textile industry?

There's also a Dictionary Of Euphemisms, one of Eponyms: What's in a name? : an Australian dictionary of eponyms, and a small hungarian-german Útiszótár Magyar - német dictionary. It always amazes me what turns up at the local op-shop.

Even though they're probably quite common, my favourites would have to be Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Devil's Dictionary , A dictionary of classical antiquities, mythology, religion, literature & art; from the German of Dr. Oskar Seyffert (and Smith's!), and W. Smith's latin dictionary. The smaller latin dico got me through my latin exam - i looked up words and it had the actual sentence from the unseen as an example! The bigger and earlier edition sits next to it on the shelf and it's nice just to read little comments on etymology and sound changes.

Oooh, that is an interesting topic:

I name

Curiosities of Popular Customs by Walsh, William

and

A dictionary of thoughts by Tryon Edwards

A Reverse Dictionary, such as the one by Theodore Menline Bernstein is always useful to have if you're doing rhyme work.

How about A Dictionary of Russian Gesture? Anyone have that one?

Yup. You'll find a lot of unusual dictionaries in my library!

How does a reverse dictionary work? would it be a bit like a thesaurus?

A reverse dictionary orders the words in reverse order of their spelling. So the reverse order of words in the first sentence is:

a
the
reverse
spelling
in
order
their
words
dictionary

What on earth would you use a reverse dictionary for???? I can't for the life of me imagine.

A reverse dictionary orders the words in reverse order of their spelling

* added to wishlist *

A dictionary that orders the words alphabetically by the spellings of their opposites would be also pretty cool

The biggest use of reverse dictionaries is to help people find rhymes. these words would be grouped together.

went
sent
bent
lent
gent
dent
pent

A little further look would yield:

runt
meant
grunt
lint
cant
aunt

I've seen The Penguin Rhyming Dictionary, but it never occurred to me that's what was happening (I'm thick). I thought it was just going by pronunciation, eg, 17.271 Eire, eyra, bearer, Sarah, wearer, sierra...Dun Laoghaire.

Thanks vpfluke, without having seen one I couldn't quite imagine how the contents would appear, but that sounds rather fun.

I was in Hawaii a few years ago and still regret not buying a Hawaiian-English Dictionary. Not that I would ever have much cause to use it, but it is fun to take something like that off the shelf from time to time and play with the words. Mahalo.

I have a Dari dictionary, which is the variety of Persian spoken in Afghanistan. A saw this at a book festival table of an obscure publisher, and felt it would be nice to buy something.

Seeing this group for the first time, I'll try to juice it up with some of my most unusual dictionaries/reference works:

Speak Norfolk today: An encyclopaedia of the Norfolk Island language by Alice Buffett, comes with a CD with spoken texts!

The encyclopedia of censorship

Tohi Vagahau Niue: Niue Language Dictionary

Comanche vocabulary Surprised that only two other LT members have this book!

The dictionary of imaginary places: a wonderful work.

Bogotu-English, English-Bogotu Concise Dictionary (Hippocrene Concise Dictionary)

The touchstones don't work for the Niue and Bogotu dictionaries, but they are in my library.

Here are the books that I've got tagged as 'dictionary': http://www.librarything.com/catalog/dtw42&tag=dictionary
A nice mix of the very common and the moderately obscure. The most unusual, I reckon, is my edition of the Little Oxford Dictionary – although one other member has a copy, I bet mine is the only specially-BBC-Radio-4-branded one. :-)

I stumbled across an English-Indonesian dictionary in a thrift store called Kamus Lengkap, Inggeris-Indonesia, Indonesia-Inggeris. I don't anticipate ever going to Indonesia, but I snagged it anyway. It's very well made, high quality paper, flexible leather binding with metal protectors on the corners. Never seen anything quite like it.